Loves Of A Blonde (1965)

Another classic now, Milos Forman (who would later do One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest) and his Czechoslovakian Loves Of A Blonde. This is a succinct tale of naive youthful romance set in a bleak Communist background. 

A factory boss is concerned that his all female workforce will become 'lonely' and unproductive without the presence of a local military regiment, and so a small middle aged force of reservists are dispatched to take up residence nearby. Three of those men attempt to coax the rather gorgeous Andula (Hana Brejchova) and her two friends at an introductory dance, but trip over themselves in some hilarious ways. Andula however is dazzled by Mila a much younger piano player from Prague; she spends the night with him instead, then breaks up with her boyfriend and follows Mila to the big city uninvited and presents herself to his parents.

Mila's parents are the quintessential married couple, taking the time honoured roles and opinions usually shared out between the husband and the wife. He is unworried by Andula's sudden appearance and is acquiescent to allow her overnight refuge at their small apartment; the mother becomes anxious over the moral destitution of her son, and blames Andula for being mislead. Mila's philandering cad-ish ways are gradually revealed and Andula returns to her provincial workplace spurned and in diminished mood. 

Loves Of A Blonde is a laudably funny film, even 50 years later. It retains the humour because it features the same relationship problems and interchanges that are universal across the spectrum of modern time, poignantly exacerbated by Forman's long drawn out scenes, whose direction is tasteful throughout. It may be twee and cutesy but not in a depletive way, it's coy but prizes naivety as a positive characteristic of youth. Glorifies and romanticises youth yet satires, fondly, it's penchant for brash action.

There is undoubtedly a political statement, subtly enfolded. It has been suggested that Andula and her friends are emblematic of the political docility of a generation grown by a system of government that has no wish for its population to become educated or aware of the world's outside of the eastern European Soviet communist bloc they reside in. Instead of campaigning for democratic liberation they chase boys and love. Deconstructing this theory, one would have to say that the opinion has been forwarded in a world in which democracy has 'won' and communism has 'lost' with, retrospectively, a clear and obvious comparison of inferiority to the lives and pursuits of contemporaneously young people in the west - i.e. by 1965 capitalist juveniles weren't slaving away in factories, mostly, but revelling in High Beatlemania. Therefore retrospective opinion puts a tendentious or slightly misread interpretation on the message that Forman may have been trying to convey. (I could probably source some Forman interviews in which he might have explicitly stated what his political intentions were for this film but I can't be bothered, because I'm not getting paid for this stuff yet therefore I can safely and legitimately write anything I want without any form of factual grounding). There is one scene of particular interest when the girls of the dormitory unanimously VOTE for a new resolution on an agreement of morality. Is this the vanguard of the winds of change or a satire on the unanmity of governmental desire for the uniformity of its people, a reflection of the communist ballots of the time - in which everyone was unanimously in favour, officially, of Soviet coercion. Difficult.

Beyond the potential political implications, Loves Of A Blonde is a luscious film of cinematic daring and execution, purposefully and effectively comical.